Abstract
In English, in order to speak about Arthur’s attitudes, we use sentences like “Arthur believes that natural language is messy”. For sentences of this kind we have a standard theory, according to which the ‘that’-clause ‘that natural language is messy’ denotes a proposition. As Prior showed for the first time, the standard theory appears to be at odds with some linguistic data. Geach and Prior both assumed that linguistic data are to be taken as reliable guides to a correct semantic account and I will start by raising some worries concerning their methodology. Because of these data, Prior and Geach suggested some non-standard accounts. I will then show that if we take linguistic data seriously, their non-standard accounts do not fare any better than the standard theory. My general conclusion will thus not only be that Prior’s and Geach’s methodology is disputable, but also that their conclusions do not seem to follow even if we grant the reliability of their methodology.
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Notes
They discussed the theory several times in a correspondence which started in the Fifties and ended only with Prior’s death. The theory was, as Geach said, an “old wrangle of ours” (1966a).
Thanks to Max Cresswell for suggesting this example.
I am not following Geach’s own terminology. Geach (1972), p. 168 distinguished between Propositions and propositions: Propositions are the abstract creatures of the darkness, while propositions are sentences taken together with their meanings. Using his terminology, his account is in terms of propositions.
Geach (1963b) adds: “I have now, I think, better reasons (than that I seemed to hear the logical gears crushingly changed) for segregating the that clauses after “verbs of saying and thinking” as grammarians say from those after ‘prevent’, ‘bring about’, etc. and verbs for pro and contra attitudes. But my views haven’t crystallized out yet”. These better reasons cannot unfortunately be found either in the published or unpublished works.
For a more recent, similar account, see Parsons (1993).
When ‘that’-clauses flank only one side of ‘is’, the sentence is generally grammatical:
That natural language is messy is the most significant proposition in this paper.
One may then hold that ‘that’-clauses sometimes can and sometimes cannot flank identity. But one may also instead hold that ‘that’-clauses never flank identity and urge that in the cases in which they seem to be able to flank identity, the predicate does not really designate identity. According to Pryor (2007), for example, in the case above in this note ‘is’ is to be taken to be the so-called specificational copula. Thanks to an anonymous referee for raising this issue.
As Geach told us, the relation between identity and singular terms goes back to Frege. For an example of Geach on identity and Frege, but unfortunately not on ‘that’-clauses, see Geach (1975).
In a first draft of the typescript of Objects of Thought, Prior seems to hold that the standard theory is acceptable for natural languages. He wrote (n.d. a; 106): “Grammatically the word ‘that’ undoubtedly does have the function of constituting a kind of name or quasi-name out of a sentence. Given the sentence ‘grass is green’, for example, we can construct the expression ‘that grass is green’ which may function as the grammatical subject or object of a longer sentence”. But this bit disappeared from the typescript.
In passing, it should be noted that in the unpublished Prior (n.d. b) but only there and deleted also there, Prior found it also “not implausible” to hold, together with the logicians of Port-Royal, that for propositional attitude sentences “the complexity ... lies not in the terms but in the copula”. According to this account
Arthur believes that natural language is messy
is to be analysed as
Natural language is-believed-by-Arthur-to-be messy.
It is clear that this is, again, at odds with Syntactic Unity: in
Arthur believes that natural language is messy and Peter too,
‘too’ can stand for ‘believes that natural language is messy’, so that ‘Arthur’ and ‘believes’ do not go together in a unit.
Another famous rejection of thesis (a) is Russell (1910)’s multiple relation theory, according to which
Arthur believes that natural language is messy
should be taken to express a multiple relation holding among Arthur, language and the property of being messy. Clearly, also Russell’s account is at odds with Syntactic Unity.
On the standard account of definite descriptions, definite descriptions also are quantified phrases. If this is correct, then definite descriptions are another example of quantified phrases that can flank identity, as shown by the perfect grammaticality of
The proposition that natural language is messy is the proposition that natural language is messy.
Thanks again to an anonymous referee for stressing this point.
One may think that the quantificational account is in conflict with a new datum. For according to this account,
Arthur fears that natural language is messy
should be taken as tantamount to
Arthur fears a that natural language is messy,
which is a quantified sentence. One may then think that since the quantifier ranges over the different objects of the attitudes, then in substituting a description for one of those objects I should have to obtain a sentence having the same truth-conditions, but I do not. For example, if Arthur fears that natural language is messy he does not fear a proposition. But this problem is quickly solved by holding that in the context of different predicates, the variables range over objects of different kinds: in the context of ‘to fear’, over states of affair, while in the context of ‘to believe’, over propositions.
Also Kenny (1963), p. 145 pointed out to Prior that in taking propositional attitude sentences as quantificational, only objectual quantifiers are needed.
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Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Per Hasle, Peter Øhrstrøm, Jørgen Albretsen and all the people involved in The Virtual Lab for Prior Studies. They made it possible for me to have access to Prior’s Nachlass and in particular to the Geach–Prior correspondence, on which this work is based. I am indebted to Mark Textor for discussion of some of the main ideas presented here. Warm thanks, moreover, to the audience of the Arthur Prior Centenary Conference for their interesting remarks and in particular to Max Creswell, who helped me in understanding some delicate details. Gabriele Galluzzo helped me in understanding how to approach the manuscripts. Finally, I am grateful to an anonymous referee for her/his insightful comments.
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Felappi, G. Why fuss about these quirks of the vernacular? Propositional attitude sentences in Prior’s nachlass . Synthese 193, 3521–3534 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0903-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11229-015-0903-1